They meet again at a blind date arranged by their boss.
Her date runs into a friend and introduces him: “This is my childhood friend, Mr. Qin.”
The man across from her has become a powerful figure in business over the years. His looks are still striking, his air still rakish, and he gazes at her with the same cool indifference he’d show a stranger.
No one knows what happened years ago, in a private apartment.
Lin Jinwan is trapped on his lap. His fingertip rubs her earlobe as he chuckles beside her ear. “Jinjin, how long do I have to teach you before you learn to open your mouth?”
-
In college, Lin Jinwan and Qin Muchao began a secret relationship.
Qin Muchao was a handsome, headstrong darling of the heavens, never short of admirers.
She was cool and quiet. No one thought their impulsive game would last. A good girl like her could never hold on to him.
The night she broke up with him, Qin Muchao waited in the dark amid heavy snow. She avoided him and refused to come out. After a long standoff, she finally came downstairs and said, “Let’s end this on good terms.”
Qin Muchao crushed out his cigarette and walked over. His features blurred by the falling snow, he suddenly pinned her roughly against the wall. “Don’t come begging me if you regret this.”
No one expected him to be the one who got dumped.
She thought their reunion would be nothing more than a chance encounter in life.
Until one night, with only a door between them, Qin Muchao backed Lin Jinwan into a kiss. She could barely breathe and was constantly afraid someone would knock.
“Slap me and push me away, or keep playing me. You choose.”
“I’ll accept either.”
“…You’re still not done going crazy?”
He laughed hoarsely, but there was no trace of amusement in his eyes. His voice was shamelessly cocky. “A few slaps for a kiss? Worth it.”
-
Lin Jinwan doesn’t know.
The night she left after her blind date with another man,
a glowing red cigarette ash fell and burned the man’s fingertip.
She also doesn’t know that at the final race before Qin Muchao retired, he was crowned F1 World Champion amid roaring cheers. At the height of his glory, he kissed the back of his hand in prayer, brimming with confidence and unmatched by anyone.
People said a darling of the heavens like him would never stop for anyone in his life.
After the race, though, the man got blind drunk and sat alone on a mountainside watching the stars. Only his closest friend saw him lower his head and run his fingers over the wedding ring he’d bought at eighteen, eyes reddening.
Later, when their relationship became public, everyone said the two of them wouldn’t last.
But one night, when a few friends brought a drunk Qin Muchao home, a cool, quiet woman in a white dress stood at the door and softly called him A Chao. He hurried toward her, as if embracing the impossible dream he’d carried all his life.
He held on and wouldn’t let go, whispering hoarsely over and over, “Don’t leave.”
All these years, he was the one who couldn’t let go, hopelessly in love all along.
-
Rekindled romance, both are each other’s first
Former race car driver and influential Beijing power broker x cool, reserved prosecutor
But in those bleak, lightless days of the past, there was something no one knew.
In the years when she was a girl who could barely put her feelings into words, Lin Jinwan had stacked up sheets of yellowed manuscript paper and written his name millions of times.
Qin Muchao.
The Chao in “from one lover to another,” the Mu in “longing for someone day and night.”
-
Theme: They didn’t know for all those years, but winter did.
